


Interstellar Navigator

by clandestine7



Category: D.Gray-man
Genre: Drabble-esque, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Space AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-03 02:53:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11523024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clandestine7/pseuds/clandestine7
Summary: One evening, a man shows up at the shitty restaurant Lavi works at and gets snooty about where to park his fancy spaceship.





	Interstellar Navigator

**Author's Note:**

> The first nine parts were posted on tumblr after I got a prompt for a LaviYuu + space AU 3-sentence mini fic. I've kind of moved past my anime phase, so I decided to finish up that fic here while in the process of finishing up my other in-progress fics and leaving this account as a memory of all the anime fic I've written in the past several years. So that just leaves my laviyuu reincarnation AU to finish for this fandom, though that's the last on my to-do list.
> 
> (part 11 of this fic is the first part I ever posted, the response to the original prompt that spawned this whole idea in my head :D )

1\. the meeting

 

“Um…you can’t just park your spaceship there.”

The most beautiful man Lavi has ever laid eyes on shuts the door to his fancy little space pod and then approaches Lavi, looking rather annoyed.

“It’s an interstellar navigator.”

“O….kay,” Lavi says. “You can’t park it there.”

“You park it there, then. You’re the valet, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, but that’s a reserved spot.”

The beautiful man lets out a snooty breath. “Look, I was just told to meet someone here for dinner.”

“Oh?” Lavi’s interest is piqued even more. He’s heard that line before, many times from people who look like travelers, just like this man does. “What are you meeting for?”

“Dinner.”

“No, besides that.”

“I can’t tell you,” the snooty man says, not missing a beat. He tosses Lavi the ignition strip, opens the back door to the restaurant, and slips inside. “Park it wherever,” he says, just before the door closes behind him. 

Lavi leaves the navigator in the reserved spot (the manager never comes in anyway), sets the strip on the charger behind the valet podium, and tells Daisya to take over for him. 

 

2\. at the bar

 

The restaurant Lavi works at is nonsensical, to say the least. Divided in two, one half is for the fine dining experience (reservation only) and then through a muffling curtain and down a long hallway is the bar that anyone of age, and sometimes under, can get into. The maitre’d is a walk-in who left his job at a restaurant down the block a few months ago, took over for the no-show manager (who’s still none the wiser), and somehow gets paid despite not being on the payroll. 

Hopefully, nobody realizes how dysfunctional the place really is. As the valet, Lavi doesn’t really know if the restaurant’s in the clear or not, but he’d be sad to see it close down. It seems to be bullshitting its way along well enough, much like he is. 

To his surprise, the snooty man shows up at the bar later. His hair is long and silky dark, tied up with a piece of twine. His bangs are in need of a trim, falling over his eyes, making him look more menacing than he is. Maybe. As Lavi watches, the man orders something strong, throws it back in one swallow, and slams the glass back onto the counter, barking out an order for another.

Lavi sips his own drink, watered down because he needs to get back on shift later (shouldn’t even be allowed any alcohol now), and sidles up to him. 

“How’d your dinner date go?”

The man glances at him, then tosses back his second shot. He smacks his lips and says, “Shitty. Bastard didn’t show up. Left a note for the server to give me saying he’d been ‘tied up’.” His words are gruff, dripping with disdain, or maybe he was already drinking at his table.

“So what, you got something time-sensitive to pass along?”

The man doesn’t answer. He’s glaring at the bartender, waiting to win his attention back. Lavi’s getting a picture of what this guy does; he’s seen several, after all. Traveling around in a ‘space navigator’, meeting for official business in fancy restaurants when he clearly isn’t the type for luxury, working with shady business partners… 

Lavi should be careful, but instead he says impulsively, “So, did you eat?”

“No.”

“Can I buy you dinner?”

The man turns to him, looks him up and down, and smirks. “Sure.”

Lavi would bemoan spending half a month’s paycheck on one meal, but his dinner company is something else entirely. The man is blunt, looks Lavi head-on, his flirtation almost challenging. He might bowl Lavi over, if Lavi isn’t careful.

“Do you usually offer dinner to people you’ve just met?” the man asks, lowering his wine glass from his lips. “Or is it only when they park in reserved sections of your lot?” He’s grinning, calculating and full of enjoyment, and Lavi is rather invigorated by it.

“Neither. I guess you just caught my eye.”

The man lifts an elegant eyebrow. He is dashing in the dimmed light - high cheekbones and long neck, thin fingers around the stem of his wine glass. Lavi hasn’t even asked his name, and feels like he’s missed his chance to.

“How lucky of me,” the man says. “You treat strangers very well.”

“Better be careful. You don’t know what my intentions are.”

The man chuckles. “I can guess.”

But his smile drops after dessert, and he reveals his own intentions. “I need a place to stay,” he says, tone all business. “I need to track down that asshole, I don’t know this city, I don’t have any money, and I need lodging. You can pay me back this way.”

“Pay…you back?” Lavi says weakly.

The man smiles once again. “For the pleasure of my dinner company.”

 

3\. the ride home

 

Daisya isn’t exactly happy to see Lavi blowing off his second shift to get into the passenger seat of some man’s spaceship, but Lavi tries to explain that it’s not what it looks like. Though he isn’t sure what it really is. 

“Nice ride,” he says once he’s buckled up. In all fairness, it isn’t a spaceship or a space pod. It’s a two-seater, not that different from a regular sky car except it’s got wings with a hulking engine attached beneath each.

It hums to life quietly enough when the ignition strip is slipped into the slot behind the steering wheel. Dozens of little nobs and buttons glow on the dashboard, and there’s some sort of quieting function going on as well, because Lavi’s pretty sure those super-powered engines should be deafening. They pass between the tops of skyscrapers, windows going dark as businesses close for the night. A long line of red taillights lights the way ahead. 

“So, Space Man. Got a name?”

The man glances at Lavi, then back at the skyway. “Kanda.”

“Kanda, eh?” Lavi says, feeling the word in his mouth. He’s not sure where to place its origin. Snack wrappers crinkle beneath his feet. It’s kind of messy in here. “D’you wanna know mine?”

“Fine.”

“Wow, friendly, aren’t ya? It’s Lavi.”

“Okay.”

A tricky one. That’s fine. Lavi isn’t about to forget the flirting they did at the restaurant. Yeah, he was totally played, but some of that was real - or maybe he’s just desperate and lonely, but he decides not to run that route right now.

“So, Kanda, where are you from?”

“Earth.”

Lavi whistles. “The Milky Way. You’ve come a long way, Mister Interstellar Traveler. I heard I’ve got some descendants, great-great-great-grand-somethings, from Home Base, but I dunno how much truth is in that.”

“Tomorrow I need a list of all the shady places a traveler might stay in this city,” Kanda says, as though Lavi hadn’t spoken. “With this asshole, it would have to be extra shady. He’s probably gambling to pay the bill. If there are any underground lodgings, tell me. And shady dives to eat in as well. I need to kick his ass, but not tonight. I need to sleep. Also, if you have something for my headache, I’ll take it. Don’t bother me when I’m sleeping. I wake up early to meditate. Don’t bother me then either. I’ll leave you alone after that.”

His fingers are tight against the wheel, his knuckles straining. He looks, for the first time, like he isn’t feeling well.

“Turn right up ahead,” Lavi says softly. “We’re almost home.”

 

4\. longer

 

“Did you find him?” Lavi asks the next evening. It’s the first time he’s seen Kanda since shutting the door to his bedroom last night.

“No,” Kanda grunts. He eats food out of Lavi’s fridge, showers in Lavi’s bathroom, meditates in Lavi’s living room, and then goes to sleep on the floor beneath a blanket Lavi lets him borrow.

Lavi asks the same question the following evening, and gets the same answer. “What the hell are you doing all day, then?” he asks.

Kanda gives him a look that says,  _None of your business._

Lavi would be more annoyed, would be more unnerved, but Kanda is quiet when he’s around (which is largely when Lavi is sleeping, which maybe should be unnerving?), and on the third night brings home food, and on the fourth sets a stack of bills on the kitchen counter. 

“Let me stay longer. I got a job.”

“Um…don’t you want to rent a hotel room or something?”

“It’s fine here. I trust you.”

Lavi raises his eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s how it works.” But that stack of money looks nice, and Kanda hasn’t killed him yet.

They start eating dinner together, and it’s mostly awkward. Kanda seems to have forgotten how to flirt, and Lavi isn’t sure what to do with the pretty unsociable man semi-living in his house, and now borrowing his clothes. It’s a testament to how dull things typically are that he doesn’t  _completely_ want Kanda to leave.

Kanda can cook, and Lavi is surprised to learn this.

“I travel,” Kanda says, Lavi at his shoulder watching him stir meat and vegetables around in a broth. “I can take care of myself.”

“More like you’re taking care of me,” Lavi says. “I haven’t eaten this well since I bought you that ridiculous dinner.”

“Well,” Kanda says softly, and Lavi thinks he doesn’t mean to sound so pensive, “you take good care of strangers.”

“I guess I know good strangers.”

Kanda chuckles. Theirs is a very unconventional arrangement indeed. 

One night, a couple weeks in, Kanda joins Lavi on the dinky little patio, hardly large enough for two people. Lavi lives eleven floors up, but the city goes on even higher. Usually it’s too bright to see many stars, but every once in a while Lavi catches sight of the Andromeda in the night sky, a mystical purple-blue glow between sky scrapers.

“I’ve always wanted to get out of here,” he says when Kanda steps up beside him. “I’m living such a small life in such a big world. Such a big galaxy. Such a big local group.” He glances at Kanda, whose head is tipped back, eyes on the sky as well. “Where else have you traveled?”

“Far,” Kanda says. He meets Lavi’s eyes, his own full of the city’s light. “It’s not that great. Everywhere’s the same.”

“Easy for you to say,” Lavi says. He looks back at the sky. “I really want to get out of here. It’s all so boring.”

“Why don’t you get another job, do something more interesting?”

“Because life is hard and it sucks and I’m tired of it all.”

He feels Kanda watching him, and is suddenly too nervous to look back.

 

5\. a date

 

One night, Kanda returns home with blood on his hands, and dried into his shirt, and clinging to him in the smell of iron. He shows his distress in hurried footsteps, in the jacket he tosses to the floor, in the hands he clenches in his hair.

Lavi stands stunned in silence, and Kanda rushes past him into the bathroom. The shower lasts, and lasts, and lasts. Lavi imagines red swirling down the drain, and waits for the panic to edge out his shock, but it doesn’t. 

When Kanda comes out, it’s with a thick blanket of steam billowing around his legs.

“Do you want to go out tonight?”

Lavi looks over from the couch. He’d been working up the nerve for a confrontation, but is thrown off. “What?”

“Do you want to go out tonight?” Kanda repeats.

“It’s already night.”

Kanda narrows his eyes, then looks away. “Never mind.”

“Do you mean like…a date?” Lavi doesn’t know what’s worse - the way his voice croaks or how ill-timed the question is.

“No. I mean, you’ve been a good host, so let me make it up to you.”

It doesn’t sound to Lavi like he has a choice.

Kanda takes him to a rooftop restaurant, a casual place with patio heaters burning for warmth. Kanda buys him a beer, and they take a seat near the edge of the roof. Incense from the fires makes the air sweet, masking the skyway fumes. The cars pass close by, leaving the red streaks of their taillights in the corner of Lavi’s vision.

“You know this city better than I do,” Lavi says, impressed by the venue. He glances at Kanda’s hand, fingers curled around a heavy glass, but can’t see any blood under his fingernails.

“You should get out more,” Kanda says.

“Don’t really have a reason to.”

Kanda tips his head, lips lifting, and suddenly they are back at the restaurant in the dim light, that hot-blooded energy taking over. “Well, it’s a good thing I’m around, then.”

Lavi wonders if Kanda flirts when he’s stressed. If so, what does that make Lavi? A fool twice over? And what does that make Kanda, playing with him and staying with him?

“What’s your favorite color?” Lavi asks.

“Blue.”

“Food?”

“Nothing sweet.”

“How old are you?”

“Interstellar travel warps any ability to accurately measure age, but roughly twenty-five.”

“Do you think I’m attractive?”

A flicker of surprise in Kanda’s eyes. “Don’t you think you’ve drank enough?”

“I’ve just started.”

“Maybe you’re a lightweight.”

Lavi grins. “Evasion. I know that one. Tell me, Mister Mystery, why are you still here?”

“I told you. I have a job.”

“You know what I mean. Why are you still  _here,_ as in pretending to live with me?”

“Maybe you’re bearable company.”

Lavi smirks. “Maybe you’ve got a thing for me.”

Kanda smirks too, and folds his arms onto the table, and leans forward. Nose centimeters from Lavi’s, he says, “Maybe you should stop asking me questions.”

 

6\. a type

 

“So,” Lavi asks over breakfast the next morning, “you got a type?”

Kanda looks back at him from the doorway, about to leave for wherever it is that he goes. “Loud and clingy, believe it or not.”

Lavi grins. “Sweet.”

Kanda rolls his eyes. “More like a headache.”

When Lavi shows up at the restaurant that night, he learns that their manager was murdered the night before. In a moment of stunning clarity, he thinks,  _Oh shit, I’m living with his murderer._

In many moments that lack clarity, he gets very drunk, vaguely recalls waving away a fuming Daisya, and then lays his head down on the bar counter.

He comes to with a jolting snore, and finds himself in the navigator. The dashboard dials are too bright, the squares of the skyscraper windows streaking by too fast. He turns his heavy head and says, “Why’d you kill my manager?”

Kanda’s expression tightens. Lights dance off his face. He glances sidelong at Lavi. “He was up to some shady business.”

“I thought that was your business partner.”

“They both were. One is dead. I dealt justice.”

“Justice.”

“Your boss was doing illegal things.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to kill someone.”

Kanda’s lips thin. “A technicality. Don’t turn me in.”

At home, Kanda makes him drink some fancy bubbly water from who the hell knows where and then brush his teeth. Half in his pajamas and half out, Lavi slouches back into the hallway and finds Kanda sitting at the table.

“He was an ass so I don’t care. I won’t turn you in.”

“Thanks,” Kanda says, staring at the tabletop like his thoughts are light years away. “You should get some rest.”

Lavi tips into the wall, grinning broadly. “How about you interstellar navigate your way into my bed.”

Kanda looks up. “Does that work on other people?”

“I dunno, none of them have an interstellar navigator. So whattaya say?”

“I think you should finish your water and get some sleep.”

Lavi grins some more. “Want to interstellar navigate me back to my room then?”

Kanda stares.

Lavi shuts his eyes and sags farther down the wall. “Ugh, I don’t wanna wake up tomorrow. Do you have any secrets to make hangovers not happen?” His lips twitch. “Interstellar not exist?”

“I’m going to interstellar knock you out myself,” Kanda says, and there's a shuffle and some footsteps, and the next moment Lavi is knocked off his feet, but he doesn’t fall. He’s in Kanda’s arms, is being carried, head clonking on the door frame - 

“Ow! Don’t be so interstellar fucking rough.”

Kanda drops him onto the bed.

“Interstellar goodnight,” Kanda says, and then the door shuts.

Lavi grins to himself in the dark. This one’s a keeper. Except Lavi can’t keep him.

 

7\. human

 

“Can’t sleep?” Lavi asks.

For the past three nights, he’s woken up to the lamp in the living room shining a strip beneath his door. 

Kanda sits in the glow of the light, back to Lavi. Meditating, probably, but he still answers: “Yes.” Voice full of gravel, tiredness.

“Oh.” Lavi hovers in the doorway. “That sucks.”

“It does,” Kanda says dryly.

Lavi goes over and sits beside him, which earns him a  _look_. A  _What the hell do you want?_ look.

“I’ve heard - now don’t take my word for this - but I’ve heard that when you’re stressed or grumpy or whatever, having someone play with your hair can loosen you up.”

Kanda’s lip curls. “I won’t take your word for it, and I don’t need a demonstration.” He scoots away, to rest his back against the front of the couch. This is dramatic even for him.

Lavi lets him be moody, studies his face instead. A steep frown, tension between his eyebrows. The look of someone who has been agonizing over some thought or another.

Lavi’s own brow furrows. “Was it your first time, you know…” He waits for Kanda to look at him again, then draws his thumb across his throat.

Kanda narrows his eyes. Lavi can’t tell if it means  _Yes_ or  _No_.

Eventually, Kanda says, “Something doesn’t add up.”

“What?”

Kanda shakes his head, puts his fingers to his temples. “I can’t tell you. For your own safety.” And then, not two seconds later: “Let me take you somewhere.”

Lavi waits for some explanation, a connection between points A and B. It doesn’t come. “Why? To repay me for being such a good host?”

“Maybe it can be a date.”

Lavi snorts. “Maybe? Make up your mind first.”

Kanda tips his head back against the couch cushion. “Maybe I shouldn’t take you anywhere. For your safety.”

“No,” Lavi says quickly. “Take me somewhere.”

Kanda does, and then takes him back home. Both ways on foot. When they stumble inside, Lavi trips over the doormat and hears Kanda laugh.

“Oh my god, you’re a human being!”

“Obviously,” Kanda says. 

Lavi turns, and sees a smile that nearly breaks his brain. When he can think again, he says, “You are so drunk.”

Kanda laughs, a sound like three short coughs. His face is shiny, his cheeks blotched red. A mess. “Obviously.”

“Shit,” Lavi whispers. He’s whipped, he’s so whipped. He steps toward Kanda.

But Kanda stops him, two fingers against his lips. Their eyes meet. Lavi laughs. Kanda laughs. The world goes fuzzy around the edges.

Lavi wakes up with his head pillowed on Kanda’s arm, and Kanda breathing open-mouthed into his face, stale and beer-breathed. They’re on his bed, on top of all the covers, still dressed down to their shoes. Dawn presses against the windowpanes. Lavi’s head swims. 

He turns over, scoots back into the line of Kanda’s body. An arm drapes over his waist, pulling him closer.

And then the nausea hits, and he tears himself away to sprint for the bathroom.

 

8\. a past

 

The knock on the front door comes while Lavi is nursing his hangover, slouched on the couch with a cool towel over his face. Eardrums pounding, he lurches to the door and yanks it open with too much force, upsetting his balance. When he regains himself, he says, “Who the fuck’re you?”

The young man has shockingly white hair, and a jagged scar down one side of his face, right through his eye. He blinks with doe-like innocence and says, “I’m sorry, I heard that some of my mail was delivered to you by mistake.”

Lavi squeezes his eyes shut until his head stops spinning, then squints them open again. “I never get mail.” He starts closing the door, but a hand shoots out and blocks it. The skin looks grizzled, or burnt, or dead and flaking off.

Seeing Lavi’s repulsion, the man hastily withdraws his hand, shaking his sleeve down over it. “It’s just that I was told -”

“Mail goes to the lobby,” Lavi says shortly. He’s starting to have a bad feeling, a niggling sense of wrongness alongside the needling in his head. The man is trying to peer over his shoulder, get a look inside.

“You’re gonna have to ask the front desk. Sorry man,” Lavi says, shutting the door and turning the lock. The apartment complex attracts its fair share of weirdos, cheap and dingy as it is, but they never get eleven floors up.

When Kanda returns later, Lavi says to him, “Hey, a guy with white hair came by today -”

He can’t even finish the sentence before Kanda’s hands are fisted in the collar of his shirt, knuckles pressed against his throat - not hard, but enough to make him swallow.

“What did he do?” Kanda growls.

“Nothing,” Lavi says quickly. “Nothing - he said something about mail - I think he was trying to come inside. Is he the guy? That you’ve been looking for? Your business partner?”

“We’re not business partners,” Kanda says, positively snarling now.

“Um, since when?”

Kanda hesitates. Eyes shifting away, he says, “Since he learned there was a bounty on my head.”

Seconds tick by, and then Lavi says, “Oh, shit.” The grin comes without reason; maybe his brain still thinks he’s drunk. He covers one of Kanda’s hands with his own. “So you  _do_ get these pretty hands dirty.”

Kanda pins him with a glare, but it drops away fast. They’re standing very close. Lavi can tell Kanda remembers last night, what happened in this very spot - stumbling over the entranceway, laughing with Lavi, putting two fingers to Lavi’s lips. They can’t keep toeing around this thing forever.

“You know, it probably means something if everything turns into a sexual tension moment with us -”

“Aren’t you scared of me?” Kanda asks in disbelief.

“No.” Lavi steps even closer, feet nudging Kanda’s, foreheads almost touching. He’s the taller one, just barely.

“You should be scared of me.”

“Are we in a soap opera?” Lavi asks. He’s smiling, but Kanda isn’t. No matter. Lavi tips his head, leans in. Their noses touch, and Kanda turns his face away. 

“I can’t.”

“Why?” Lavi snorts. “For my safety?”

But Kanda lets go of him, won’t look at him. “There’s someone.”

“Oh.” The word drops from Lavi’s lips, falls and falls and seems never to land.

“It’s not…like that.”

Lavi lifts his eyebrows. “Oh?”

“They’re…dead.” This word does land, and heavily.

“But you’re stuck on them,” Lavi says. He’s starting to sound mean already. It’s the hurt. He’s never really been good at hurting. He’s always tried to hide it and let it spill out when he’s alone, but alone used to be home, and Kanda takes up that space now. Kanda, the stranger Lavi so desperately wants to know, just so that he can have someone.

“I don’t know,” Kanda says. 

“It wasn’t a question. I’m telling you that you are.” Lavi backs away. “What the fuck. Was I really just a place to stay this whole time? You shouldn’t have strung me along.” His voice breaks, the hurt bleeding through. “You shouldn’t have played me like that.”

Eyes on the floor, Kanda says, “I know.”

 

9\. return

 

Kanda leaves, but his stuff is still in the living room, so Lavi knows he isn’t gone for good. Lavi waits up for him, a scowling presence in the bedroom doorway, staring straight across the way at the front door. 

Kanda returns very late, spots Lavi, and lets out a breath. “Are you still angry?”

Yes, Lavi is still angry. Teeth-grinding angry. “Shit, you could’ve just said - could’ve just said you can’t kiss me because you’ve got some psycho trying to  _kill_ you. Not - not  _this_.”

Kanda lifts his eyebrows, such a careless gesture. “I didn’t think you’d be so upset,” he says, taking off his shoes, focusing on this rather than Lavi.

“You didn’t think I’d be so  _upset_ -”

“We’re strangers.” 

The words hit Lavi harder than fists. He thinks them over while he’s lying in bed waiting for sleep, breathing in the silence of the apartment, knowing Kanda is still in the living room but not knowing for how much longer.

They’re strangers. Lavi wants him and they’re strangers. It’s unhealthy, this thing. Right? This is what Kanda is trying to tell him. That Lavi shouldn’t want him, that Lavi’s stupid for wanting him, that this is just another thing Lavi is doing wrong.

Sometime during the night, Kanda leaves. When Lavi gets up in the morning, he finds that Kanda has left him more money, a stack on the table, no note. He clenches his fist, then swipes it into the stack of bills, scattering them all over the floor. “Money’s not what I want, you stupid shit,” he grinds out, but Kanda isn’t there to listen.

When the man with the white hair knocks on the door again, Lavi opens it and says, “He dumped me, you stupid fuck, now leave me alone,” before slamming it shut again. 

It’s the start of a very bad stretch of time.

The restaurant burns down - kitchen fire is the official cause, but with their manager’s recent murder, they all figure it’s arson. Lavi’s out of a job for a month, starts up as a fast food delivery guy, burns his hand badly in some grease when he’s trying to sneak some dinner from the kitchen, and quits out of spite. He drinks some, does some unsavory substances, blacks out in his bathroom one night and wakes up hours later with a crack on his head and blood dried all over his temple and neck.

He does odd jobs, sleeps at odd hours between them. He stops spending money on anything that isn’t rent, utilities, and the bare necessities of food and personal care, because  _if he can just save up enough to get out of here…_

And then, one night - one morning - a time when the sun is barely beginning to trickle into the blackness of the sky - Lavi returns to the rundown hallway of his rundown apartment building, and stops cold when he sees Kanda standing beside his door. 

Kanda breaks the silence first. His voice sounds like it hasn’t been used in a while. “I thought you’d be gone.”

Lavi laughs, harsh. “I fucking wish.”

Kanda shifts his weight, an oddly unsettled motion from him.

“Why are you here?” Lavi asks. He can’t close the distance any further. It’s like the air has congealed between them - he doesn’t want to enter it.

And then Kanda says, looking directly across the space into his eyes, “I was thinking of you.”

_Fuck you,_  Lavi thinks.  _Fuck you, you don’t get to do that._

“Let me -” Kanda’s voice breaks. He licks his lips. “Let me take you somewhere.”

“I don’t want to go anywhere,” Lavi says, his own voice tight in his throat. 

“Let me take you somewhere.”

 

10\. take me

 

“Your favorite color’s blue and you don’t like sweet food and you’re twenty-five years old,” Lavi says, fists on his knees, “so I know some things about you. We’re not total strangers.”

When Lavi had agreed, through his teeth, to let Kanda take him somewhere, he thought they’d actually  _go_ somewhere. Instead, Kanda’s just been flying him around in his stupid spaceship, that congealed silence between them thicker than ever until Lavi had to break it.

“How do you know any of that’s true?” Kanda asks without inflection.

“You can cook, and you killed someone and hated it, and you laugh like you don’t fucking know what a laugh is. You didn’t tell my any of those things, so I know they’re true.”

“Congratulations.”

Lavi steps on a food wrapper, crinkles it beneath his heel. “You’re a fucking slob who can’t clean his own damn spaceship.” He slips in a sharp sidelong grin, already starting to feel desperate. He still wants Kanda so badly, hates himself so much for it. “I’ve been paying attention to you, whether you like it or not.”

Kanda’s eyes are on the traffic signal bobbing in the middle of the intersection, red shining off his face. Lavi takes his ponytail, gives it a tug. Kanda resists, but not very hard. So Lavi pulls some more, and when Kanda leans over, he takes Kanda’s face and turns it. He kisses Kanda, and Kanda kisses back, and it’s anticlimactic and defiant and oh so cold. 

And then a horn blares behind them. The signal has turned green. Lavi says, “I want to go home.”

Inside his apartment, he kisses Kanda again, and Kanda kisses back, but it’s only lukewarm. Going through the motions, with none of the emotions. Maybe he just feels sorry for Lavi, but Lavi doesn’t care. He takes Kanda to his bedroom, kisses him again.

“One time,” Kanda says, pushing Lavi's shirt up. 

Lavi helps him, flings it off. Kanda’s hands drag over his back, feeling him with force. Kanda pushes him onto the bed, climbs between his legs, and tugs him closer by the belt loops. Lavi can’t catch his breath, likes being manhandled, likes the look burning in Kanda’s eyes. And he wants to manhandle, too. He’s still angry.

He grabs a fistful of Kanda’s hair, near the roots, and pulls Kanda’s face down. And Kanda kisses him this time, hard. He kisses Lavi's mouth, his neck, all the way down his chest. He drags his teeth over the soft pudge of skin on Lavi’s stomach, and then looks up.

Lavi says, “God, please,” and gets a smirk, and fingers on the button of his pants.

He wakes up later, and Kanda’s still asleep beside him, face half in the pillow, hair a mess everywhere. He wakes up again even later, and Kanda is sitting up beside him, watching him.

“Hungry?” Lavi croaks. Kanda nods, so they cover up and make their way to the kitchen, bare feet padding along. The silence around them is uncertain. They eat and each time their eyes meet it feels like there are a million things to say, only both of them have forgotten all language. 

So they sleep together again instead, on Lavi's old creaking bed, and Lavi is overly vocal to make up for Kanda's silence.

He wakes up later and Kanda is still there. The day is bright and Lavi’s missing work, so he curls up against Kanda and falls back asleep.

He wakes up, and Kanda’s gone. It’s still lukewarm under Kanda’s side of the covers. Lavi flings his off, pulls on his clothes, crams his feet into shoes at the entranceway, and flies out of the apartment.

There’s a long-term lot at the edge of town, with a fuel station for those passing through, or about to set off for a long trip. Lavi sprints. It takes him twenty minutes and two nearly-collapsed lungs, but the fuel station comes into view, an ugly thing rising on a flat expanse of dead ground, mountains rising up in the distance. He sprints down the decline, kicking up clouds of dust, and when he's close enough he spots Kanda's navigator, and then Kanda's dark shape beside it.

"Hey, jackass!" Lavi shouts when he reaches the fuel station, his throat raw from exertion and now the volume of his voice. He stops a few paces from Kanda's navigator, hands on his thighs but he lifts his head to see Kanda's reaction. 

Kanda looks up from the wing, backlit by the end of day. He goes still. Lavi’s heart does as well. And then thumps onwards.

“Take me somewhere.”

 

11\. something meaningful

 

“Do you want me to say something meaningful,” Lavi says through gritted teeth, “like ‘I’d follow you across galaxies’ or ‘I’d follow you through supernovas’ or something like that, is that what it’ll take?”

“No, and the second’s impossible,” Kanda says, sounding bored as he leans against his fancy little spaceship ( _”It’s an interstellar navigator”_ ), sounding like he truly doesn’t care, and the sun slips beneath the mountains in the distance, leaving his face nothing but two pinpricks where his eyes are - Lavi can feel him watching, and waiting, and maybe even hoping for the argument to continue.

Andromeda’s arm is visible in the sky tonight, dark space dust surrounded by a purple glow, and Lavi can’t let Kanda fly out of it without him, won’t let Kanda pretend that he wants to go alone. 

 

12\. one better

 

“I can give you one better,” Lavi says softly. They’ve been flying in silence, save for the rush of the wind and the hum of the navigator’s engine. He’s been scared to break the peace, lest it wakes him up from this dream and sets him back on his shitty planet he's so tired of living on. But he’s spoken now, and though his voice sounds too loud, it hasn’t shattered anything. He’s still here, wherever here is. 

Dark empty space, the pinpricks of light all around hanging stationary. Lavi has been waiting for Kanda to set up the speed boosters, but Kanda isn’t doing anything. Lavi looks over. Kanda’s face is illuminated by the dashboard; he’s staring severely through the windshield. 

Lavi swallows, mouth dry, and says, “The Andromeda and Milky Way are destined to collide, just like we were destined to do the same. We’re meant to spend our lives together.”

He would never say such a thing under normal circumstances, would cringe away from even thinking something so crudely romantic, but he feels his life changing and can allow himself a few moments of this.

“Even when they do collide,” Kanda says, almost toneless but his voice is tight around the edges, “the stars will be too far apart for any of them to meet. Nobody will even notice the galaxies coming together. The solar systems won’t be affected. Nothing will change.”

“Do you really not want me here?” Lavi asks.

“No,” Kanda says, flipping open one of the flaps and punching in some commands, “I really do.”

“Then why are you so upset about it?”

Kanda jams his thumb into a button. Lavi’s head hits the headrest, his spine cemented to the back of his seat. His stomach disappears. The stars hardly seem to move, but he can feel himself moving, can feel the navigator breaking barriers - sound, light, and then what?

Into the disorientation, Kanda speaks.

“I’m not good at starting over.”

 

13\. starting over

 

“I think you did fine,” Lavi says, climbing onto Kanda, flopping down on his stomach, and folding his arms on Kanda’s chest.

Kanda grimaces. “I was pretending to be asleep.”

“I know, that’s why I started talking.”

Lavi can see Kanda’s eyes roll beneath his eyelids. 

“Like I was saying, I think you did fine. Starting over. Well, you didn’t really start over at all. You’re still doing the same old stuff, but with me now.”

“Will you shut up.”

“Aw, are you embarrassed?” Lavi kisses Kanda’s reddening cheek. “We both said some stupid stuff in your spaceship, don’t worry about it too much.”

Kanda opens his eyes, frowning cutely.  _Interstellar navigator_  is what he wants to say, but Lavi kisses it off his lips. Kanda shifts beneath him, one of his legs bending, thigh warm and smooth against Lavi’s side. 

“So, who are we gonna catch today?” Lavi asks. He runs his fingers over Kanda’s forehead, fanning the bangs from side to side.

“I don’t catch people.”

“Okay, okay. Who are we gonna trail and possibly beat up or kill?”

“That was once,” Kanda says, and Lavi knows he shouldn’t have brought it up because Kanda still regrets it. He’s had to take on a lot of Kanda’s demons, living with him like this. Has developed a lot of his own, too. But the rough lifestyle suits him. He feels like, in some past life, he might have done some shady stuff to be adapting so fast. 

He touches Kanda’s cheek, bringing Kanda’s eyes back to his. Kanda’s lips are amazing but Kanda’s eyes do things to him - leave his stomach in knots and his heart floating. Kanda could spout any number of lies to the contrary when he’s in a mood, but his eyes always say that he wants Lavi with him, that if Lavi doesn’t make him happy he makes him something very close.

It’s a fresh type of love, Lavi thinks giddily. New and full of wonder, steeped deep in intensity.

“You’re heavy,” Kanda says.  

“Uh huh, and what else?” Lavi says, grinning.

Kanda’s eyebrows furrow. “What?”

“I’m heavy, and also  _Ah, so good Lavi, there Lavi, god Lavi, please_  -”

Kanda’s arms clamp around him, and then he’s flipped onto his back.

“You’re a menace and your breath smells awful,” Kanda says, before ducking to kiss the sensitive spot beneath Lavi’s jaw, scrape his teeth along it. And then he’s out of bed and heading buck naked to the door, the true menace of the two of them.

Lavi whistles. They're still starting. But it's working okay so far.


End file.
